Let There Be Blood

Dear Guillermo del Toro: Qué pasó? Did someone hijack your latest movie, Crimson Peak, and simply keep your name on the writing and directing credits? I smell a rat. Maybe Tony Scott? No, sorry, he’s dead. Please tell me it wasn’t Michael Bay. Anybody but Michael Bay. Continue reading 

Shadows of Post-Punk

Shadow Age

Shadow Age

Silaluk, the debut full-length album from Richmond, Virginia post-punk revivalists Shadow Age, is out now on 6131 Records. The album is garnering critical acclaim among a movement of new bands revisiting the classic post-punk sound.  “Musically I was really inspired by most of the older UK post-punk bands from the early ’80s,” vocalist and guitarist Aaron Tyree says. “Like The Chameleons, The Cure, Death Cult, Danse Society.”  Continue reading 

The Future of the Internet

If you want to be great you have to get in front of as many people as possible and be confident yet vulnerable

The Internet

Critically acclaimed soul and R&B act The Internet features Syd the Kyd (Sydney Bennet) and Matt Martia, alumni of controversial and groundbreaking hip-hop collective Odd Future.  The Internet’s 2015 release Ego Death is out now on Odd Future’s record label. The record frequently gets lumped in with an avant-garde or alternative soul scene alongside artists like Janelle Monáe. In fact, Monáe makes a guest appearance on Ego Death’s “Gabby.”  Continue reading 

Indie Honesty

Horse Feathers

Horse Feathers

After 10 years of indie Americana marked by the slow-burning sound of violin, cello, guitar and melancholic vocals, Justin Ringle, frontman for Horse Feathers, thought he was finished with sad songs, and therefore done with his career. He didn’t pick up his guitar for months.  But instead of finality, Ringle chose revision, replacing strings with drums on the band’s recent album, So It Is with Us, and, in that pivot, encouraging fans to want what they want for themselves: more joy and more fun. Continue reading 

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Haunting sounds from the Eugene Opera, the UO School of Music and Dance, Vox Resonat and more

Vox Resonat

If you had to pick a perfect opera for Halloween, Benjamin Britten’s 1954 The Turn of the Screw might be it. There’s definitely a haunted house, but in librettist Myfanwy Piper’s adaptation, as in Henry James’s 1898 novella, mastery lies in mystery. What really happened at scary Bly House? Ghosts? A more mundane human-perpetrated evil? Mere insanity?  Continue reading 

The Beet Goes On

The Sugar Beets celebrate their 25th anniversary with a benefit for the Eugene Education Foundation

The Sugar Beets

Formed in the UO dorms in 1990, the Sugar Beets ought to hold the all-time record for Band Fortitude: “A quarter-century of sustaining anything in this crazy world is a rarity,” says Marty Chilla, acoustic rhythm guitarist and Beets founding member. “It feels like destiny sometimes, and just plain persistence and work at other times. The Sugar Beets have just kept going step by step, song by song, show by show, and have grown up in front of each other and our audience.”  Eight years ago, the band introduced the “baby” of the group — jazz vocalist Halie Loren.  Continue reading 

Arts Hound

In Eugene, one of my favorite markers of the season is the Día de los Muertos opening reception at that old dame on 15th Avenue — the Maude Kerns Art Center. By opening night (Oct. 16 this year), the sun sets early, hastily swapping out for a harvest moon. In the moonlight, the campus neighborhood buzzes with families, students and other show-goers crunching through the leaves and up the steps into the cozy, glowing art center.  Continue reading 

Portland’s Whitebird Dance Presents Twyla Tharp, Oct 14, 2015

How can one possibly review a great artist like Twyla Tharp? Her work spans fifty years – this is the 50th anniversary of her dance company – which deserves its own accolades in the arts-funding parched USA. 50 years of collaborations, discipline, technique, of musical explorations, theatrical endeavors, of making her mark, of being herself, of being a woman in a male-dominated field, and a strong, focused and no-nonsense woman at that. She’s a role model for creativity and the shrewd confidence needed to sustain growth over time and space. Continue reading 

All in the Family

Neil Simon’s play Lost in Yonkers (1991) asks one of life’s universal questions: Why is my family so crazy?   Simon is an accessible, sentimental and popular playwright. And Very Little Theatre wrings all the sentimentality it can from a strong and winning production. Set in 1942, Lost in Yonkers tells the story of Eddie and his family. Eddie (Paul Rhoden) has gone into debt covering his recently deceased wife’s medical costs.  Continue reading